What’s a birthday? Just another number on the calendar right? Not for Monika! Her birthdays are special and can last for days, depending on what she dreams up each year. Backpacking in the California Sierras, climbing to the top of Half Dome nearly 5,000 feet above Yosemite Valley and 8,800 feet above sea level, jumping […]

It was 23°F outside under a blazing blue sky as the second day of the 16th Annual Golden Eagle Hunters Festival began. Different from the previous day’s event where eagles had to attack a dead rabbit or fox being drug behind their trainer’s horse, today they had to zero in on their owner who held a […]

After a harrowing 5-day/900-mile, (1,500 kilometers), drive across the amazing expanses of the northern Gobi Desert, (see previous blog), we arrived at the site of the 16th Annual Golden Eagle Hunters Festival just outside of Bayan-Olgii in Western Mongolia, (You recall, this is the “middle of nowhere”.), and parked to join the growing crowd of […]

Yes, we know. If you have been trying to following us from Greece to Turkey to Georgia to Azerbaijan to Turkmenistan to Uzbekistan to Tajikistan to Kyrgyzstan and across all of China—-well, travel has been a bit hectic. Keeping up with visa entry deadlines and just life on the road has left little time and […]